N.C. Overton (ndp Andrea Hunter)

Writing is NOT a Hobby?

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is for me to abandon my writing to do something else — surf the social media sites, work on a bathroom remodel, write a presentation for an upcoming class, watch the news. I have a wonderful new regimen for writing and it was working great, until I interrupted it with finishing my presentation for the class I am teaching in the fall. Granted, the presentation needed to be finished, but during MY WRITING TIME set aside specifically for ME???????

I think I get so caught up in necessities and expectations that I sacrifice the one thing that means the most to me — my writing time. So how is it that I can so easily give up my writing time to use for other purposes. Well, if I knew that, I could stop it (couldn’t I?). It makes me wonder whether writing is all that important to me after all. How can I so easily sacrifice it to the banality of the day-to-day.

The reality of my writing life is that maybe, just maybe, I still don’t look at it as a career. So often we are raised to believe that any artistic expression is a hobby, not a career. As a hobby, it becomes secondary to the responsibilities of the day-to-day routine. So I think I still have that in my mind, at the heart of the matter. My writing, while I love it, is still a hobby to me and not a career. So, how do I change that notion? How do I reprogram my belief system to accommodate writing as a my career? After all, I was a professional technical writer for most of my adult life. Why is writing a novel any different? Hmmm. I will have to ponder on that some.